Its time for our Annual (4th) 12 Days of Christmas Sale. This year we've expanded the sale to include PDFs (at RPGNow and Drivethru, making similar PDF offerings for everything we have on sale in our own Store Front.

The Sale includes the Castle Keepers Guide in PDF for $20.00 and in Print for $30.00! It includes a number of package deals that include the CKG and complimentary products.

This year we'll also do daily specials, on top of the 12 Days. Today we are offering Star Siege for $10.00! These specials will rotate out daily, so check back often. Click the picture for the cheat sheat!

So I don't get it. Do zombies need to eat? Will they eventually just fall over and die if they don't get enough food? And what kind of caloric intake do they need? (I've never used that word in a sentence, but today is a special day!) Also, what happens in the cold? Do they freeze and their limbs, not getting enough blood, fall off?

Thursday, November 24, 2011

To all and everyone in the great old U.S.A. Happy Thanksgiving. The Troll Offices will be closed for the most part of Thursday and Friday. Don't let that Turkey weigh you down...they have a stone bound stare!

Gather! Eat! & Feast! or as the Dwarves would say: Hulbre u' Gaustebud!

It's time for the FEASTING TO BEGIN!!!!

All this reminds me of Troll Con, an event that we will not miss a second time!! Trollzah!

We just updated our store front to reflect the release of A9 The Helm of Night. This is the latest installment in the Assault on Blacktooth Ridge adventure series. We've released it in Print, $6.99, or if you prefer you can get the Print/PDF ($9.99)version or you can snatch it if you would just rather it in PDF $5.59). (follow the appropriate link)

At the Basilique St. Denis lies the Tomb of Kings, where many of the Kings of France, from Clovis to Louis XVI have been buried. Clovis was actually originally buried at the Abbey of St. Genevieve and only moved to St. Denis in the 18th century (in the great monarchial round up!). The picture here is Childerbert I (I think).

Here are a smattering of Kings and Queens. Picture this as your characters enter the tomb, just before they start to rise up from the dead (actually I'm pretty sure Malady of Kings adventure module has a scene very much like this).

This one has floated around, but Peter (our art director) is a good friend of these young ladies and was talking about them this morning. Reminded me of the song. Check out the Damsels of Dorkington and I Kissed a Nerd!

Alright, if you've not had the chance to check it out, check out the cartoon Adventure Time with Fen & Jake. I've watched about 5 episodes in the past week or so and they are awesome! Basically this boy and his dog going on some of the wildest and most clever adventures conceived.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Apparently some few years, years being centuries ago, some fellow threw some holy soil from the Holy Land on the cemetery in the small Czech town of Sedlec. The place rapidly became a place where people desired their bones interred. Its been going on for 400 odd years. Bones began to pile up until in the 1870s they decided to go art nouveau on the place and made the bones part of the decor! Welcome to the Sedlec Ossuary!

This is how I want to spend eternity! Stacked around a bone goblet!....actually that seems somehow not so bad!

PERFECTLY. Davis, Todd and I piled out to the movies last night, watched the Immortals. The movie is good, a fun watch, sometimes a little slow, but all that paled as the end roared upon us in a wild orgy of fantastic battle sequences. But the coolest thing about the movie is how the gods are portrayed. They don't sit around like dandy's from Louis XIV's court, but are beautiful creatures with terrible power. The Ares scene was through the roof where he destroys a score of humans in a second. Awesome stuff!

It does deviate from Greek mythology quite a bit, but ignore that. Those gods are just cool!

Seems the Russians were drilling in the far off deserts of Turkmanistan when they punched a hole into a huge cavern. The earth gave way and the fellow(s) in the drilling rig, with the drilling rig, fell through into the deep pit. They could not find the poor fellow but quickly realized that some poionous gases were spreading into the air . . . no doubt the wailing calls of the damned and undead . . . . To stave off the global conquest of the denizens of hell they lit the whole pit on fire.

That was 40 years ago.

You have to hand it to the Russians, they don't mess around, they'll even set hell on fire!

We've long known that a liquid ocean exists beneath the frozen crusts of Jupiter's moon Europa. But we have recently discovered lakes within the ice sheet itself. The sheets of ice over these lakes don't seem to be as thick as the rest of the crust and may allow for further exploration, drilling being easier. Its about time we went there and figured out if there is life in the deep waters, oceans, lakes etc.

Lets not forget the Classic Monsters book! Time is running out...sands in the hour glass and all that...for you take advantage of the bundles offered! Jason Walton has turned over all his art and the book enters final layout next week. Here is a sample, the Grell, one of my favorite monsters from the days of yore.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Now this is one HUGE crocodile. Peter Bradley sent this my way, I'm not sure where it was taken or how long ago, but this looks to be about the size of a mature dragon! They range to about 30 odd feet or there about and I would think this fellow is at least that. Those jaws should do about 3-30 points of damage.

So I see this picture and I marvel at the arrangement...these are bones located in the catacombs beneath Iglesia de San Francisco...but I wonder where the rib cages are! These catacombs are in Peru and apparently contain some 75000 bodies.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

We've all described them, or had them described, or tried to bust them down, but somehow I suspect we still all see doors i frames, with halls and walls and all that. But now this is a real dungeon door! Deep beneath the earth where the Goblins tunnel . . . .

Back in April it seems they found the oldest Mayan Burial chamber...for a royal. Next to his head was a jar, an incense burner, with the face of the Jester God carved on it. This looks more like the genesis of the smiley face from the Watchmen's Comedian!

Classic Monsters continues to garner enthusiasm! If you want to join in on the fun and take advantage of the dour old Trolls, put your pre-order in before its too late! Classic Monsters adds well over 200 more monsters to the mash, these taken largely from the old timey Fiend Folio and MM 2! Written by now veteran writer Kim Hartsfield with art from Peter Bradley, Jason Walton and Sarah Walker. With a spectacular cover piece by Sarah Walker!

So these strange patterns apparently appeared overnight in some desert in China (and by overnight I mean they've been visible for years, only just now discovered by some insanely bored blogger who apparently is scrying planet earth through google maps for looking for something vaguely more interesting than the bowl of cold macaroni on his desk). But I know what this is, a TLG Work Flow chart; this one from August I believe! Why the Chinese are copying it in the high desert is beyond me!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

A huge discovery in Italy recently where archeologists (glorified grave diggers!) discovered a pyramid of mummified bodies. This at the Church of the Conversion of St. John the Apostle in Roccapelago, Italy. Seems that the room had a trap door at the top through which the dead were dropped and left to pile up on the floor beneath! That's the way to do it...Rack em and stack em!

Working hard on the Rune Mark class from Winter Runes. Its finally come together and should be presentable by close of business tomorrow. I've abandoned much of the d20 approach to the class and his spell use, rather adopting a method developed by Casey Christofferson for runic magic. This should put WR on easy street. So essentially this book will be packed with tons of setting material, a bunch of one on adventures, 45 new spells, new magic and a new approach to the wizard/illusionist class, all this for your C&C Game!

I think I will also launch a pre-order bundle page for Winter Runes later this week.

Okay, this is just cool. The norhern lights are something out of a really good sci fi film, but of course they are real. If you have a human population fear, or rather, a fear of a growing human population you should probably not watch! ;)

Monday, November 14, 2011

Seriously. I got mad and threw my computer to the ground. It turned into a thousand glittering shards of metal and plastic. Well the plastic did not glitter. It lay there in a dull spatter of petrochemical detritus.

The elf don't care. He's immortal so he could just care less about all them mortals wandering around. He don't care about the woods, the animals, the good or the evil. The elf just exists to eat meat and drink wine - fine wines and good meat. The elf takes what he wants when he wants it cause he knows it will be gone soon. He'll cut down a whole forest to get a stag because he knows its coming back. He's an holy death dealer on the battlefield because he's been fighting crap f-o-r-e-v-e-r. He don't care know more about nothing because because its all going away anyway. All he wants to do is drink a fine wine and eat a good slab of meat before the next lout tries to take something from the elf - notably his wine and meat. The elf will build a big castle as often as not. He's knows it will fall down someday so might as well live in a tree. The elf like pretty things because so much of the world is full of ugly crud and he gets tired of looking at it. Sometimes, the elf gets so tired of looking at ugly stuff he just burns it down, knowcks it down or finds some other method of destroying it.

Spent the last hour in the print shop. Everything seems to be running a little quieter than normal. The cutter's hydrolics are quiet, the grinding wheels on the perfect binder, quiet, the big color press, quiet . . . . its tense as if something were about to happen . . . .

The Eternity Brigade by Stephen Goldin is one of the coolest books I've ever read. Its been years since I turned its pages (and childhood memories may enhance the writing style factor) but its theme resonates with me 30 years later. The book chronicles the tales of a soldier who finds it easier to cyrogenically frozen than go back home. He is woken up for war, trained in new tech and after its over frozen again. Eventually his dna is recorded and he is constructed for battle, complete with memories and experiences. Its a really cool book with a really memorable ending!

So if the collapse of Gaulic power under the Carolingians wasn't enough proof (remember the Vikings hammered Gaul into submission) it seems that the Merovingians even ruled the clergy better than the Carolingians. It wasn't until old Louis the Pious (this is Charlemagne's son) that the clergy began to organize itself and press for political as well as spiritual power; this involved massive land grabs! The Church managed, after much maneuvering and support of several Civil Wars to convince the Carolingians that a King was chosen by god and therefore must be crowned by a Bishop. This of course made them much weaker their their Merovingian predecessors.

The Merovingians were not so easily controlled. Despite the manifold civil wars between the fatheres, sons, cousins, nephews and the like the clergy never exerted authority over them.Quite the opposite the clergy were forever doing the will of the Kings.

There are one of two reasons for this:

1) No dynasty can be really bad ass that begins with a patriarch named Pippen (Charlemagne's grandfater).

OR

2) The Carolingian practice of appointing Bishops from within the clergy wasn't as affective as the Merovingian practice of appointing Bishops from within the Merovingian family!

Post Script: Interestingly the Merovingians did not use the crown in any ceremony either. Seems all the pomp and circumstance of later kingdoms wasn't necessary for Merovich's folks. Of course when your ass is made of iron, what do you care if the seat has a cushion or not!

Friday, November 11, 2011

In doing mapping research and images for Peter's forthcoming work on the soon to be released Winter Runes, I came across this great snap shot of Neuschwanstein one of the most famous castle in the world. It is a beautiful castle, mounted on the high walls of a cliff with a winding road to his gates. Its very defensible of course and makes me pity the army that would have to shoulder shield and mail and lay siege to it. Of course the adventurer that has to scale the mountain road to plunder its wealth would have the same task to overcome!

So we've put quite a few of Peter Bradley's art on the blog and in the video and of course you've seen Sarah Walker's work on the cover of the forthcoming Classic Monsters. I asked Jason Walton, whose worked with us from the very beginning by the by, back in 2000, to send over some of his. He sent me this batch. Enjoy! (but don't forget to take advantage of the Trolls and get your pre-orders in today!).